Below, I am sitting (second from the left with the beard) in front of the welcome building at Taize (above) in the early 1970s.
The same building (above) as it is today.
MY EUROPEAN TRAVEL ON A FEW DOLLARS
Part One
Between 1971 and 1976, I made 5 back-packing trips to Europe with students from Somerset Community College in Somerset, Kentucky, where my first assignment was as a newly ordained priest. Ignorant of how risky and challenging it might be to be responsible for young adults who had never been out of Kentucky, I managed to accompany small groups of from 5 - 10 at a time. After landing in Paris, we always made our way south to Taize, France, in a rental car where 1,500 youth a week from all over the world would gather for a week-long retreat while camping in the open fields around the tiny town of Taize. Taize was the location of the ecumenical monastery of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox monks half-way between Paris and Lyon, about two miles from the ancient ruins of the famous Catholic monastery of Cluny. In this first of two blogposts, I will report a few of the odd experiences we "enjoyed" during those trips.
When you "registered" at Taize, you were "assigned" to a language group. Of course most American were placed in one of the English speaking groups, along with those from other countries who wanted to practice their English-as-a-second-language speaking abilities. We would typically be assigned to a group with students from Germany, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Austria and a few other countries.
One of my favorite memories were the bonfires in an open field. A hundred or so of us would create a circle of sleeping bags around the fire, two rows deep, while anyone who wished could start a song in whatever language, usually English, and we would sing as a group the rest of the evening. As the night wore on, we would go to sleep in that circle, in our sleeping bags, in what got to be called "a sandwich bed." It was called that because we had fifty or so army blankets to cover our sleeping bags in an over-lapping pattern. It was summer, so it was not a problem, even if we woke up the next day a little damp from the dew.
One day some of us Americans and Belgians decided to hike a few miles across the fields and walk back on the nearby railroad tracks. As we came around a bend in the tracks, we could see a truck caught between the crossing gates that had closed in front of and behind the truck and a man screaming as he waved angrily at us. We had no idea why he was so angry at us until one of the Belgians translated for us. He was angry because we had triggered the gates as if we were a train coming by our walking! I had no idea what names he was calling us, but the Belgians simple said, "It's not good! Let's run back the way we came until he is gone!"
The "accommodations" at Taize were "primitive" to say the least! What could one expect for the $2.00 a day for food, "if you could afford it" and some couldn't! For breakfast, you got a plastic bowl of hot chocolate and a fist full of French bread (which was always good." For lunch you got a plastic bowl with lemonade, maybe a hardboiled egg or two and more French bread. For dinner, you got a plastic bowl with mashed potatoes topped with a greasy sausage and me a soft drink. The showers were icy cold and the toilets were, let's say very much like you would imagine in a concentration camp! You di your business with your nose pinched and got out asap!
The church services were always in French, but the music was so simple and repetitious that you didn't need a music sheet. There were no seats, even for the monks who sat in the center of the church. Everybody sat on their heels, or with their legs crossed, elbow to elbow. When I was there, the crowds were huge. The "reflections" by Prior Roger were always translated into multiple languages at the same time though headsets that could be picked up on your way into the church.
